


FIREWATCH

by finnat131



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Laith, M/M, klance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 05:58:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15382194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finnat131/pseuds/finnat131





	FIREWATCH

 

The fan spins fast overhead, but not fast enough.  I can feel the little bits of moisture at all of the corners of me, and the smell of wood floors and linen sheets and mint shampoo permeate the room.  It smells clean now, but I know that sometime in the night they’ll transmute into something far less ethereal, that when I wake there will be nothing for it but another shower. 

I spread my arms and legs to the edges of my bed, trying to disperse the heat through as much space as I can.  It’s a small improvement, but not by much.  These Garrison-issued single beds were never meant for sprawling. 

It might be cooler if I closed the balcony doors, but if I’m being honest, the heat is only a tiny part of what’s keeping me up, and I think the ease that comes over me listening to the sounds of the night come in through the screen door does more to lead me towards sleep than the heat bothers me.  I kind of hate having the door closed.  Hate the quiet that comes.  Hate how claustrophobic it makes me feel in this Garrison-issued single room. So the door to the outside stays open most of the time, even at the price of the heat.  It’s a good twenty feet down to the mountainside below, but with the sounds of the night coming into the room, it’s easy to believe that I can leave whenever I want, step right out into the night and join everything that lives in the dark, because even that might be less lonely than looking for the edges of a single bed with fingers and heels.  So the door stays open.  And I stay alone.  And the fan almost spins fast enough.

 

* * *

 

Sitting up in the tree, I resist the urge to close my eyes, to start counting the seconds in my breaths, to cuddle up next to a nap.  I’m supposed to be keeping watch, so I dutifully keep my eyes peeled open.  I move my knee a little more to the right and watch as a bar of sunlight slides into place beside the shadow grabbing my thigh, feel the heat wash over my skin there.  I let it get warm, warmer, warmer, until it becomes uncomfortable, and I slide my knee noiselessly back into the shadows.

“Are you sleeping up there again, mullet?”

“No.”  I barely raise my voice. 

“Then how many peaks can you see?”

I look at my watch instead. 10:15.  Joke’s on him.  I grab my cables and jump into the open air.  I’m rappelling down the tree at top speed, feeling the air rush past me as I sail for the forest floor. I land on branches as I go, and to anybody on the ground, it must look like I’m taking big walloping leaps to the forest floor, but most of the control is in the cables in my hands.  They’re designed to be a two-person rappelling system, but they have the technology to work as their own suspension system, the way the belt grabs the cables.  Garrison design.  One-person—"first-element”—descent is supposed to be something of an emergency feature, but I’ve always preferred it, even when there’s a second element on the ground.  Especially when second-element is someone like Lance.

Or maybe it looks like I’m falling.  Like maybe I should have stopped moving at the first branch, but I’m already on my way to the second.  And in no time I’m on the ground again, and Lance is looking at me kind of wide-eyed. 

“Show off.”

I stretch, touch my toes, glad to be standing again.  I can smell his mint shampoo.  Garrison-issue.  The same as mine, but it smells different on him, and I imagine a shower-fresh Lance lying naked on his own single bed, limbs splayed around him, residual water mixing with the thinnest sheen of sweat on his skin, on top of his sheets.  I push that thought away before I stand up straight to face him.

“Maybe if you were more vigilant.”  I bring my wrist up, showing him the back of my hand, the small watch there.  The same as his.  “ _The fire never sleeps,_ ” I intone, as we have so often been intoned to. Like a prayer.  I let my eyes look around his face, can see him waiting for each word I speak.  “It’s your turn.”  My voice is quiet, flat.  My eyes are dead.  I can feel them dead in my skull.

I will my mind to be quiet too.  Why is his face so perfectly expressive?  The hard line of his eyes.  I try to count the seconds in my breaths.  In:  one-

those angry no-bullshit eyes

-two-

or are they upset?

-three-

and his hair, brown

-four-

 

-out-one-

and warm and

-two-

short enough to stand on his scalp even in the heat

-three- 

And he’s moving toward me, closer, closer, eyes on my face, eyes on my stomach, at my waist, and he’s too close, and I could cry, the way his hands are moving at my waist, the way he’s not looking at my face, the way he won’t, and I can feel my clothes moving, tickling at his touch, feel him tug upwards at my pants, the incredible gentleness of it, the incredible lightness of those slim fingers and he

looks up at me, into my eyes, and even though they’re still dead I know all the parts of my face aren’t where they were before, and I hate him for that and he says,

“I know.”

And he looks down again, taking the cables from my waist and attaching them to the loops at his, into the mechanism there.  He puts the stray end of the cable in my hand and starts ascending the tree, and I finally remember to breathe in again. 

And I hate him.  For the perfection that nature endowed him with. That it did not endow me with. Has it bloomed even brighter in his care?  How can anyone know.  But I know in my heart that yes he has grown it.  If I could be him would I be him?  In a second.  Happy, beautiful child of fate.  But I cannot be him.  And I cannot have him.   When he’s settled up in the tree, facing west, I move to the east and lean my back up against the trunk and wish I were on fire. Imagine the flames licking up my flesh, taking me, making me something better.  All over in a minute.

 

* * *

 

There’s nothing productive in self-loathing, but that doesn’t mean it’s such an easy thing to stop doing.  Anger is addictive, and when you let it free inside your own heart, nobody tells you to stop.  Nobody knows they need to tell you to stop because it’s all inside you.  And by the time it’s a real problem, the kind that other people can see, “stop” isn’t enough anymore. 

 

* * *

 

“Stop.”

Iverson doesn’t raise his voice to say it, demands that we work harder to perceive his words, rather than work harder to produce them.  And if we don’t?  That’s our problem.  Pushups, or laps, or rope climbs.

Jerick stops immediately, still bouncing on the balls of his feet, fists hovering near his chin.  I want to tell him to stop that.  Want to drop the full-body blocking pad I’m holding and push his own damn fists into his face.  But he wouldn’t appreciate that.  Iverson wouldn’t appreciate that.  Good news, gentlemen.  Cadet Kogane is such a skilled fighter that he’s going to teach you all how to fight properly.  In a line all of you.  One at a time.  Take a swing at him, and teach him a lesson or be taught one.

Not that it really matters. Basic combat skills training is just part of the Garrison’s comprehensive training regime.  Throwing punches at an opponent is supposed to be more engaging than climbing ropes all day.  And maybe combat training was once a useful skillset for future members of the West Guard, but it’s been a long time since anything has come over those mountains that we could throw a punch at. 

“Two laps, A team. Thirty pushups, B team.”

I drop the pad and go to my hands and knees, and then I’m pushing through my set.  Feet five inches apart, back straight, core tight.  Head up, looking straight ahead.  Push.  One-

Lance running

-two-three-

like he was made to run

-four-five-

barely touching the ground

-six-seven-

quads bunching at the knee

under the same Garrison-issue shorts as mine

-eight-nine- 

shirt-tail sliding around his waist

feet a midair blue-sneaker blur

leaned forward at a taut ten-degree angle

his face

-twentythree-

his eyes

I don’t know how many pushups I’ve done, but everyone else is standing, so I stand up too and pick up the blocking pad and focus on breathing

“Line.”

and Lance is standing in front of me and Jerick just looks at him before walking further down the line and

breathe, breathe

eyes like he’s running at me

breathe, breathe

shoulders twisting over that little waist, punching the _hell_ out of the pad, the pad that’s strapped to _my_ arms, I remember, feeling the jolt of pain from too many pushups

breathe, breathe

fists hovering around his chin and I want to

I want to

grab those wrists and

push them flush against his chest and say protect this and

breathe goddamit 

“Stop.”

Eyes on me like, like

Wasn’t that good?

I could laugh.  From dizziness, from the meanness of it all. Do you need my approval, little boy? You have everything.  You have everything.  Everyone here will look you in the eye and tell you how good you are why do you care what I think why

do you need me to look you in the eye?

What did you say?

“What did you say?”

“Switch, doofus.  Give me the blocking pad.” 

Peeling the velcro free from my wrist, feeling the dampness of it, of my sweat there, watching him concentrate on wrapping the guard on, on getting my sweat to lick into his wrists.

“Start.”

So I start and

his eyes go wide, a lot wide, and

Breathe, breathe, breathe,

yeah I can _fucking_ look you in the eye

but can you feel

what I’m feeling? 

Breathe, _breathe, breathe_ ,

Can you feel it

_breathe_

_yet_?

_can you feel_

I feel a hand on my chest, and I’m panting, and Lance is standing six feet away from me, eyes on my face. 

“I said stop.”  The voice is quiet in my ear.  Mostly, I know the words from the way they vibrate around my chest, from the hand pressed into my sternum.  My arms feel shaky, but I keep my fists raised, ready to fight, at my collarbone, and I look into those cautious blue eyes.

 _This is where they go_.

“Ten laps, Cadet Kogane.”

 

* * *

 

I remember playing in the park with my dad one time when I was eight.  We were play fighting, and he was on his knees so we could throw punches like the red- and blue-boxers on a Rock Em Sock Em.  We’d been chasing, rolling around in the grass, big hands grabbing me by the waist, scooping me up mid-sprint, tossing me in his arms like I was nothing, and the laughing, what a racket I must have been in that innocent neighborhood park, the big puffy-cloud trees witness to the simple joy of a boy and his dad running around a warm summer afternoon.

But somewhere in squaring off at each other, things had become serious, and I wasn’t smiling anymore as I raised my hands, gently formed fists, in front of my face almost up to my eyes and looked at him over my knuckles. 

Fast as a breath of air, his left hand came forward, fist uncurling, the cat-pads of his fingers pushing my fists into my mouth.  The quickness of it surprised me, made me jerk my head back, not from pain.  Just surprise.

I lowered my fists beneath my face, and his smile came back.  A small nod.

“There you go.”  And from somewhere far away—I knew he wasn’t in the park anymore, was thinking of somewhere far away, or maybe, sometime far away—he added, to me, or to someone I would become, burying the words in my eyes for me to dig up later:  “You’ve got to protect yourself.”

I thought he was talking about mom.  How she left. But now I know he was talking about himself.  How he would leave.

 

* * *

 

“… something fun.” 

I realize he’s waiting for an answer. 

“What?”

He rolls his eyes. “Come on, space cadet.  I said let’s do something fun.”

I force my voice not to hitch, to be normal.  “Like what?” He looks away, and I add, to summarily describe the impossibility of the suggestion, to succinctly explain the insurmountablility of the suggestion, “In this heat.”

He nods absently, looking out into the distance, fanning himself with one of the laminated emergency procedure cards lying on every table in the dining hall.  The digital clock on the wall says 13:23 and the thermometer says 35. 

He lays the length of his body down on the table, arms outstretched, fingers coming dangerously close to my arms, where they’re pressed against the table, allowed to hang between my legs.  My eyes are drawn up his arms, to the ball of his shoulder, sinewy under the lightweight khaki uniform, and I hear the words muffled from where he’s pressed to the table, accepting defeat.”

“This heat.”

A second passes, and I feel the disappointment of it, how easy it was, to dissuade him, no fun, not with me.  Always fighting and hoping I lose. 

“Tonight then.”  He sits up, the defeat drained from his face, victory in his eyes, a smile quirked onto his lips.  “Let’s sneak out, into the cool, bless-ed night.” 

I snort.  The nights are not cool.  I nod.  Yes. Into the bless-ed night. 

He stands, winks. “See you then, Keith.”  Carries his tray across the room and out the door. 

It’s unfair really. How he can be this way with me so easily.  How he can be easy.  Like I’m not always trying to fight him, like it’s not always rolling around just under my skin.  That he can be friendly, give me this thing like friendship, and I will take it.  I don’t get it at all.  Don’t deserve it.  Can’t refuse it.   

 

* * *

 

My watch says 23:47.  We’re walking around beneath the trees and stars and ziplining wires.  There’s a network of them up here to make getting around to the watch stations, some of them miles away, easier, faster.  We don’t use the lines tonight though.  That would be too conspicuous, would ruin the secret we’re sharing, would take from the pleasure of sneaking around on the forest floor.

The woods stopped feeling threatening years ago.  Now, pushing around underbrush, roots, watching for stones, it feels easy. Comfortable.  The night is warm, but no longer unbearable, and the crickets make a single undulating symphony, sometimes becoming shrill, sometimes barely a whisper.

I follow behind him, letting him lead the way.  Letting him lead the way to our something fun.  When we were still close to the Garrison, we were both silent, picking our way wordlessly through the woods, all the more aware of our rule-breaking for being closer to the facilities, shoulders hunched in conspiracy, moving quickly, quietly through wood.  Now we stand straight, tall, loose, swinging arms, rustling leaves.  Lance hums.  Sometimes we talk. 

The conversation, Lance laughing and prodding and asking, me guarding, has fallen away again when we come upon the clearing.  Some of the zipline extends across the open air towards one end, but most of the clearing is unobstructed to the night sky.  I’m looking up at the sky, the stars, when I almost trip over Lance, crouched and pulling his thick winter quilt from his backpack, spreading it out on the ground, happily patting the empty blanket next to himself. 

It’s unreal to me. That I can lash out at him like I do, and he can still be this way with me.  That I can allow it.  This extreme contradiction of behaviors in myself.  His extreme cleanness of character.  _Be my friend_.  Always. I can’t give it to him, of course. Then he really would have everything. He’s friends with everyone, and I’m friends with no one.  One of the last acquisitions for his empire, maybe. 

But I lie down next to him. His hands are crossed behind his head. Mine are crossed over my chest. And we both watch the stars. They’re brilliant. 

“This is kind of dangerous, you know,” I say.

“Oh come on.  What are the chances of a fire now?  It’s rainy season.”  He drags his hand across his forehead, not bothering to remove the moisture there, just moving it around, as if to prove his point.  He catches me looking at him and smiles.  _It’s too humid for a fire_ his hand says, slicked to his forehead.  I look back at the stars.

First claim refuted. He counterargues.  “This is fun.”  And his voice hikes up at the end,  _fun_ , he asserts, like if he sounds like he’s having fun then he must be.  And the thing is, it is fun.  Actually walking past the screen door on my balcony into the night.  I could almost imagine the woods gasp, _you really meant it all along, he came out, he came to us, he really did want to join us_. Leaving behind that tiny room. Leaving behind the me who’s stuck in his room.  Sliding down the rope to the ground.

And because I’m not me, not the me who’s stuck in my room now, I can look at him and smile in the dark and say, “Yeah.  It is fun.”

And because I can, I get over him, my hands on either side of his face, my knees on either side of his hips.  It feels _right_ , his warmth between my hands and knees, and I look down at him. Even in the dark I can see his face. It’s hard to tell what’s there, but it’s not surprise.  Something like relief. 

And then the me that’s in my room, I can hear him.  And he’s telling me all the reasons I’m wrong.  All the reasons I can’t.  All the things I’m not to him.    

So I roll back to my side of the blanket and look up at the blurry fucking stars and pant, or is it heave, heave, _heave_.  Lance rolls onto his side, onto his elbow, to face me, and puts a hand on my stomach and says Keith,

“Keith.  Keith, it’s okay.  I want it too.”

I push him back to the ground and kiss him, hard, angry, push my lips into his, and I pull my face back from his, and look down at him, and hear my breaths coming out of me like a dying man trying to get the water out of his boat with a single bucket, but the water keeps coming up, up, up.  I kiss him again, gentle, like I really want to, if I weren’t running out of air so fast.  Kiss him and tell his lips everything, everything, everything with my lips.  I pull away again because I’m still heaving out air like buckets of water.

He’s still talking to me, the me in my room, lying alone, really alone, on my bed.  And I don’t think I can listen to him much longer, not like this, so I sit up, stand up, walk back into the woods.  Don’t stop when Lance calls me.  Walk back to the Garrison.  Climb up the rope, shut the door, and empty the whole blue ocean out of my lungs into my room. 


End file.
